The DTEK60 is “absolutely not the last BlackBerry phone”

Not long after it announced that it would quit making its own smartphones, BlackBerry today officially unveiled the DTEK60, a high-end handset that’s available to buy right away for $499 unlocked.

Even with this new BlackBerry smartphone now on the market, some fans may be worried about the future of the company. That’s why BlackBerry COO Marty Beard is reassuring the world that the DTEK60 “is absolutely not” the last BB phone. The company is working “with more partners” to develop and release new handsets (one of them possibly being the Android Nougat-based BlackBerry Mercury). These partners will be in charge of building hardware and distributing the phones, while BlackBerry makes sure everything is right on the software side. In the end, these will still be BlackBerry-branded smartphones.

The BlackBerry DTEK60 itself is manufactured in collaboration with a partner: TCL, which also makes Alcatel handsets. The new phone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow customized and secured with BlackBerry’s own software, and it will be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat.